The Failing New York Times has just done another big reveal on Loser Trump’s taxes.
I do not expect that this will move the needle very much, in terms of Trump’s popularity with his base, but it ought to be the end of his career in politics – he should be unable to survive a debate or press conference without getting hit for his imaginary wealth. I think the democrats are making a big mistake trying to treat it as a criminal matter (which it is!) rather than just laughing out loud at Trump the Chump, who managed to lose more money in one year than any other American. “No wonder you had a gold toilet, you fraud. Geeze. What’s it like flushing $450 million down the growler?” He could have lived a life of Lamborghinis, cocaine, Cristal, and porn stars off of the interest of the money his dad gave him (illegally dodging taxes by devaluing the assets) but this wretched parvenu had to play the big game and lost his table-stakes.
The real story is that nobody, not even Jared Kushner, will do business with Trump ever again. He’s burned. He’s toast. He’s over medium. He’s done. He’s going to spend the rest of his life getting sneered at by new money like Jeff Bezos and Tim Apple and the Clintons, never mind the old money that always treated him like a wretched parvenu. Old money invented the scams Trump has been trying (and failing!) to run, and they can smell him coming a mile away. They are people who grew up reading a balance-sheet and that stuff Trump’s been shovelling is obvious manure to them.
The second big story is that Trump is going to be dismantled for fraud at every level of his operation. Presumably the NYT was careful not to mention this, for fear of lawsuits, but if you have assets worth $100 million and tell someone they’re worth $1 billion in order to get a loan – that’s felony fraud. And, it appears that’s pretty much all that Trump has been doing. The other shoe that’s waiting to drop in him is that he’s into Deutsche Bank for a ton of money, that they lent him based on his presumed value of $billions. “How are we going to get our money back?” is probably all they’re worried about.
Behind those stories is some interesting stuff about The New York Times – namely, what did they know and when did they get it? The tax sheets of Trump’s are nothing new – the NYT has had them since 2016. They’ve already done one big splashy “reveal” which fell on the floor with a meaty “thump.” This is the same information; they’ve just had time to cross-reference it with other tax reports and build a clearer picture. I imagine that what’s been happening behind the scenes is frantic negotiation with the white house, and lots of threats back and forth, about what can be released and what can’t. Most Americans don’t realize the degree to which these things are managed and negotiated – i.e.: the Abu Ghraib and torture program disclosure, the warrantless wiretap disclosure, etc. I’ve been deeply disappointed to learn that the press (which pretends to act in the public interest) will sit on these stories for years. Why? Because they want to time it with elections, of course. They are playing politics, just like the CIA, FBI, white house, and fucking everybody else. Just remember that if you feel the slightest momentary inclination to trust the media: they’re not on your side, either. This time they’re going to pump of the volume on the dump, and throw it around like a rag-doll and see if they can get some more attention with it. It deserves a great deal of attention but apparently the people who need to get this information don’t read.
I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that if there’s a debate for 2020 in New York, Trump’s going to have to take a massive force of Secret Service because otherwise he’s going to get perp-walked by the New York Southern District, who are sitting on a massive pile of evidence about Trump’s criminal fraud that they squeezed out of Michael Cohen. Have you noticed that Trump hasn’t been going to New York so much?
The democrats should be trying to get Bernie Madoff to run as a clown-candidate in their overfull clown-car, just so Bernie can debate Donald regarding the finer points of financial fraud.
I’m also just going to throw this out: the democratic party clown-car has been conspicuously silent about defense spending. Have you noticed that? I have. We’re supposed to listen to shit like Beto O’Rorke talking about spending trillions on infrastructure, and nobody’s talking about cutting the imperial military. We’re supposed to watch the democrats ice-pick themselves over the “Green New Deal” and nobody’s talking about the rather obvious fact that our imperial military is only “green” to the degree that some of their camouflage suits have splotches of that shade in them.
Let me try an analogy: you have a friend who constantly complains to you that they are out of money, and they’re always trying to borrow $20 here or there, or maybe $5,000 so they can change the oil in their Lamborghini (those things run on fancy synthetics and they don’t have ordinary oil filters you can just pick up at Napa auto parts) – and sometimes they need $100 so they can fill the damn thing with gas because those 10-cylinder engines really blast through the petrol, eh? Then your friend tells you that they’re really serious about getting their financial house in order, and improving their carbon footprint – they’re probably going to buy a Prius so they can commute to work in it sometimes, when they’re not driving the Lamborghini. Now, can I borrow $10,000 for some hookers and a couple ounces of Mexican flake cocaine?
Trump still wins in 2020. The Democrat Establishment is much more interested in fighting off a takeover from the Left, and have pushed Biden to stop a Sanders nomination. The grift comes before the country.
It probably won’t happen during my lifetime, but I can take solace in the fact that all empires collapse under their own weight. The US can’t afford its huge military expenditures forever.
@2
Getting in a trade-crippling dick-waving contest with China should speed that one up a tad.
Of course he’s being defended on Fox now. Old news! Also, he didn’t really lose that much money! Also, everyone is doing it?
Clearly one or more of these three things must be true:
1) He is a terrible businessman.
2) He has been committing tax fraud for years.
3) He truly believes that paying taxes is for middle class chumps, and that rich people should have no responsibility for funding the country they claim to be patriotic about.
Of course, there’s no reason it can’t be all three.
I very much wish I could ask the talking heads at Fox which of these they think it is.
Is Sanders not in that particular clown-car?
The first link from google (“Sanders proposes deep cuts to military funding at campaign launch,” March 2):
He doesn’t mention “Medicare-for-All” or various other programs in the quote above, but funding them may also involve cuts to defense spending.
His website’s page on foreign policy is also clear: “We’re not going to invest in never-ending wars.”
I’d like to believe this matters, but it won’t. Trump supporters don’t care. If they haven’t lost faith in him by now they never will. He supports their prejudices and religious nonsense and that’s more important to them than honesty or integrity.
Adding a bit to what consciousness razor has said, could it be that politicians don’t talk about it in part because voters don’t care and, more importantly, wouldn’t care even if candidates did talk about it? That second part is key because an argument could be made that if politicians talked about it, it would become an import issue, much like free college has. But I think issues like college and even the environment, especially for those of use of younger age, impact people more directly and, thus, they’ll care about these more. The military spending, on the other hand, is something I think a lot of people feel little or no connection with. Granted, politicians could perhaps work an angle of “Hey, if we stop spending so much on the military, that’s money we can divert to health care, green energy, education, etc” to tie military spending to issues they do care about.
I don’t know. They kept lending him money, even after he welched on previous loans. I suspect they’re getting paid back some other way.
Nah. It won’t matter. The only ‘truth” his supporters are interested in is his living illustration that rich white guys can get away with anything. They look at him and thing #Goals.
consciousness razor@#5:
Is Sanders not in that particular clown-car?
The first link from google (“Sanders proposes deep cuts to military funding at campaign launch,” March 2):
Yes, that’s true.
I’m guilty of not treating Bernie like a serious contender; I don’t think the democratic party machine is going to let him through, the nomination will be rigged for an acceptable candidate, and that candidate will be a full-up member of the permanent war party. I guess my reasoning is circular. Add to that, I am disinclined to believe any of them anyway – I feel so badly burned by Obama’s “I will close Gitmo” and “bring the troops home” that I probably won’t ever believe anything any of them says, so it’s unfair of me to complain that they’re not saying the things I think they should.
That’s the problem with political bullshit: once you realize it’s bullshit then it’s all bullshit. Bernie might be perfectly sincere, but the endless war party won’t let it matter anyway.
Leo Buzalsky@#7:
But I think issues like college and even the environment, especially for those of use of younger age, impact people more directly and, thus, they’ll care about these more.
Yes, and that’s what infuriates me so much. Because the $$ that are the “we can’t help with your student loans or the environment” are the $$$ that are being forklifted to defense contractors in return for more nukes, more aircraft carriers, and some F-35s. Finance is a zero sum game – the money that is being plowed into ‘defense’ is the money that’s not being plowed into social needs or infrastructure.